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Jul. 31st, 2010 10:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jennariaTHE CEMETARY YEW, by Cynthia Riggs.
Cover copy: There's more than one reason the new West Tisbury police chief official made ninety-two-year-old Victoria Trumbull her deputy. For one thing, Victoria knows just about everything about everyone in town, and a lot about the rest of the Martha's Vineyard year-round population as well - not to mention their ancestors. Victoria may be afflicted with the usual aches and pains that descend on nonagenarians (she has a cut-off shoe to accommodate her bunion and a stout stick to help her on her walks through fields and woods). But she is as sharp and as sharp-eyed as the proverbial tack. So when Victoria is the only one who spots something amiss among the gravestones of the West Tisbury cemetery, it's no surprise when the chief listens.
Something is indeed amiss. First comes a request by presumed relatives in the Midwest to disinter a coffin for reburying elsewhere. Then things go wrong from there. The driver of the hearse coming to collect the coffin disappears during the island ferry trip in a rainstorm. Other deaths - some of them irrefutably murder, the others suspicious - follow. And when as a last measure the coffin is found, dug up and opened, it does not contain the expected body. Then the coffin itself disappears.
Meanwhile, the available bedroom for rent in Victoria's house has been taken over by a female relative of one of the neighbors and her raucous toucan, a bird as spoiled as the most bratty millionaire's heir. Victoria is gracious to her unwanted boarders, but they do interfere with the column she writes for the local newspaper and with her efforts to discover whether the strange antics of the coffin are related to the murders.
Victoria is the most realistic and delightful nonagenarian in mystery fiction. Her years have not blunted her intelligence and her sharp wit. We're lucky she's still around and seems to be set for a long time.
Gender of detective: female
The first of many inspired-by-Miss-Marples - although this one has plenty of other identifiable influences as well. There was a spate of herbalists right after the run on mysteries with recipes included, while the column-writing I suspect can be traced to THE CAT WHO... series. At least we don't get excerpts from said column.
The book isn't nearly as much about Victoria as you might think from the cover copy. It's more about her boarder, and some about the mysterious boyfriend of another of the town officials, and the growing realization (by the reader) that the both of them are involved in whatever is happening here. I'll admit that I didn't particularly like the boarder to begin with. The boyfriend was actually even more frustrating: it felt like the writer couldn't quite decide whether he was supposed to be James Bond-ish, or more of a trickster, or something in between. I'll be the first to admit that it's not easy to write a trickster character, but this seemed to want him to be more appealing than I found him.
Victoria isn't much easier to judge. The cover copy would have it that she's the canny sort who knows, or can figure out, all. Certainly she's the one who pegs that somethings up, because she knows there was no suicide in the family claimed, and thus no body to be dug up. But she fails to suspect certain people for a long time after the reader is giving them the fish-eye, and even when it comes down to a final confrontation, it's hard to tell how much is a deliberate trap and how much is our (female) detective needing to be rescued at the last minute from her own recklessness. Again.
Yeah, I'm cynical. After reading this many mysteries, you would be too.
*
The really tricky part of this isn't my own writing. It's trying to keep up with everyone else's. Must type faster.
Team Mariposa, Blogathon 2010. Sponsor me.
Cover copy: There's more than one reason the new West Tisbury police chief official made ninety-two-year-old Victoria Trumbull her deputy. For one thing, Victoria knows just about everything about everyone in town, and a lot about the rest of the Martha's Vineyard year-round population as well - not to mention their ancestors. Victoria may be afflicted with the usual aches and pains that descend on nonagenarians (she has a cut-off shoe to accommodate her bunion and a stout stick to help her on her walks through fields and woods). But she is as sharp and as sharp-eyed as the proverbial tack. So when Victoria is the only one who spots something amiss among the gravestones of the West Tisbury cemetery, it's no surprise when the chief listens.
Something is indeed amiss. First comes a request by presumed relatives in the Midwest to disinter a coffin for reburying elsewhere. Then things go wrong from there. The driver of the hearse coming to collect the coffin disappears during the island ferry trip in a rainstorm. Other deaths - some of them irrefutably murder, the others suspicious - follow. And when as a last measure the coffin is found, dug up and opened, it does not contain the expected body. Then the coffin itself disappears.
Meanwhile, the available bedroom for rent in Victoria's house has been taken over by a female relative of one of the neighbors and her raucous toucan, a bird as spoiled as the most bratty millionaire's heir. Victoria is gracious to her unwanted boarders, but they do interfere with the column she writes for the local newspaper and with her efforts to discover whether the strange antics of the coffin are related to the murders.
Victoria is the most realistic and delightful nonagenarian in mystery fiction. Her years have not blunted her intelligence and her sharp wit. We're lucky she's still around and seems to be set for a long time.
Gender of detective: female
The first of many inspired-by-Miss-Marples - although this one has plenty of other identifiable influences as well. There was a spate of herbalists right after the run on mysteries with recipes included, while the column-writing I suspect can be traced to THE CAT WHO... series. At least we don't get excerpts from said column.
The book isn't nearly as much about Victoria as you might think from the cover copy. It's more about her boarder, and some about the mysterious boyfriend of another of the town officials, and the growing realization (by the reader) that the both of them are involved in whatever is happening here. I'll admit that I didn't particularly like the boarder to begin with. The boyfriend was actually even more frustrating: it felt like the writer couldn't quite decide whether he was supposed to be James Bond-ish, or more of a trickster, or something in between. I'll be the first to admit that it's not easy to write a trickster character, but this seemed to want him to be more appealing than I found him.
Victoria isn't much easier to judge. The cover copy would have it that she's the canny sort who knows, or can figure out, all. Certainly she's the one who pegs that somethings up, because she knows there was no suicide in the family claimed, and thus no body to be dug up. But she fails to suspect certain people for a long time after the reader is giving them the fish-eye, and even when it comes down to a final confrontation, it's hard to tell how much is a deliberate trap and how much is our (female) detective needing to be rescued at the last minute from her own recklessness. Again.
Yeah, I'm cynical. After reading this many mysteries, you would be too.
*
The really tricky part of this isn't my own writing. It's trying to keep up with everyone else's. Must type faster.
Team Mariposa, Blogathon 2010. Sponsor me.